Not too bad. I didn't know how it was going to turn out, and the ending wasn't quite what I might have expected.

The author needs very much to do one thing with this story -- use some kind of separator, like # or * to signify scene changes. I got thrown three or four times by big jumps in the timeline that came with no warning.

For the moment I'll pass for this post on Robert M's essay topic of comparing "Coils in the Dark" with "Previously Loved". This is just back to my sweep of Early Context.

"Ziebowski had been standing at the bus stop for nearly fifteen minutes and was starting to get bored." Okay, bus stop. In general, for my context notes, it's important to figure out if there's Alternate Histories going on. See the one I just did, for "Ties That Bind". In Statistics, they used to use a terminology called H0 to indicate "zero or default hypothesis", aka something that you start with until you have proof that something more exotic is afoot. So for Earth stories, H0 has to be "Earth as we know it", even if the timeline is still unclear. So for example in "Ties That Bind", we clearly had Modern Earth, but then something about Mages and Slavers, so that's a clear example of an Alternate History, one in which Magic was highly systematized, even if it may or may not be hidden from "the unwashed plebian masses".

So, bus stop. Still H0. I may have to work on my theories more later, but for now I'll define an important class of stories of "normal world, with magic artifacts". In other words, instead of having to parse entire Mage societies, the rest of the world and people behave like you would expect, and then the story kicks in with _______ that does Something Strange. Then the next level down is Exotic Creature, that's strange, but isn't actually performing Magic.

"Later that evening, Ziebowski sat and stared down at the twenty five foot long ghostly skin stretched out on the living room floor and ignored his dinner."

So, 25 foot snake. Check. Doesn't appear to be a Snake King yet. Horror ensues, but it seems to stay a creature.